Last week we asked our followers on Twitter and Facebook to nominate the best Neil Young songs for newcomers. Here are the results: 10 key tracks we hope will act as a rounded introduction to his music. We've put them into a YouTube playlist, or you can click each song title to go to the appropriate YouTube page. We've included a little bit of information on the songs, and a few comments from readers who nominated them.

Ostensibly a lesson in the history of colonial Mexico, Cortez is also a masterclass in storytelling. Crazy Horse slow the tempo to a crawl while Young tells the listener about the eponymous conquistador.

Amazing how seven minutes of guitar solo can still be minimal, and not bloated or showy. All visceral.

Young wrote this in 1971, a year after the Kent State shootings and a month before 40,000 protesters (mostly youths) were arrested at an anti-Vietnam war rally in Washington, DC. The song is an appeal across the generational divide for some understanding and sympathy, contrasting strongly with the raw anger of Ohio, released the previous June.

At this stage of my life and his career it has to be Old Man. James Taylor's banjo is magical.

On this track from the 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps, we hear a young man's internal monologue as a hostile gunboat approaches and he decides whether to run or stay and defend himself. The decision he makes is ultimately fatal, and Young is devastating in his directness: "Then I saw black, and my face splashed in the sky".

Powderfinger shows how much feeling and story you can get into one song.

Both the Pixies and Nirvana have cited Young and Crazy Horse as an influence, and on this track from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere it's easy to see why – the relationship between laid-back verses and the violence of the chorus and solos here is a dynamic you'll find all over Nevermind and Doolittle.

Down By the River – love, murder, pathos, nine minutes of swirling build up, sexytime! It has all you need from a song.

From the same album as Down By the River, Cinnamon Girl sees more experiments with contrast: Young and Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten sing breezy lyrics about an imaginary woman while the guitars growl underneath them.

Cinnamon Girl – because that's where I started. I've never looked back since.

In the 1970s, after a cluster of personal tragedies, Young recorded three sombre, introspective albums now known as the Ditch trilogy, and the second of these, On the Beach, closes with this. It's nearly nine minutes long, emotionally vulnerable and incredibly bittersweet.

Ambulance Blues is a haunting eight-minute journey showcasing his talents in lyrics, guitar, subtlety and harmonica.

The title track from Young's third solo album describes three scenes – one past, one present and one future – with no explicit connection. The song was prescient, not just in its references to environmental catastrophe, but also because its lyrics about dingy basements and drug use would soon be reflected in Danny Whitten's descent into heroin addiction.

I think it's such a forgotten classic, and a sound you wouldn't have expected from Young.

As the title would imply, this is a fairly straightforward song about the effects of drug use on Young's acquaintances, particularly Whitten. It's given all the more impact by the simple arrangement and the fact that Whitten died of an overdose less than a year after the song's release.

We've got a Neil Young bonanza on Friday, when we'll be bringing you an exclusive extract from his autobiography Waging Heavy Peace, and a rare interview with the man himself. To get in the mood, we head to Rock's Backpages for this 1975 interview from NME